Whac-A-Mole

By George Barnes TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Sunday

Mar 29, 2009 at 12:46 AMMar 29, 2009 at 11:01 AM

Saying the next phase of the Asian longhorned beetle fight is like a Whac-A-Mole game, Colin M.J. Novick warned conservationists and naturalists traveling with him to Bovenzi Park that the infestation will not be limited to the Worcester area.

Whac-A-Mole is a game where fake moles randomly pop out of holes and the person playing the game tries to hit them with a mallet. Mr. Novick, executive director of the Greater Worcester Land Trust, was referring to the possibility that beetle infestations caused by the transportation of cordwood would occur randomly outside the quarantine area created in Worcester, Boylston, Holden, Shrewsbury and West Boylston to contain the destructive pests.

“The faster you realize you have the beetle and recognize the signs, the better,” he said.

Mr. Novick said people managing conservation areas should already be looking for signs of beetle infestation. The infestation was in Worcester 10 years before it was discovered. The result has been widespread devastation in once tree-lined neighborhoods.

“This is the first winter and we’ve had 19,000 trees cut down and expect at least 10,000 more,” Mr. Novick said, adding that there could be many more infested trees once they do more surveying.

He said people outside the quarantine area should understand that beetles could have already jumped to other isolated areas because of the removal of firewood from Worcester and surrounding towns before they were quarantined and illegal removal of wood after the quarantine was established.

“There are too many land trusts and conservation folks who are saying, ‘Thank God they are not in my area,’ ” he said. “We expect this to begin showing up in pockets outside the quarantine area.”

On a field trip from the Massachusetts Land Conservation Conference held yesterday at Worcester Technical High School, Mr. Novick, Jennifer F. Orth, an invasive species expert from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, and Tom Lautzenheiser of the Massachusetts Audubon Society took participants on a bus ride through streets in the quarantine area off West Mountain Street, stopping on Monterey Road and at Bovenzi Park on Maravista Road.

On Monterey Road, participants were shocked by what they saw. In front of every house except one was a large stump where a 50-year-old Norway maple had been cut down. The large trees had been planted following the 1953 Worcester tornado and were all infested by the beetles or were known host trees.

Standing on a stump, Mr. Novick said it still has not been decided what trees would be planted to replace the maples. It will have to be a hardy species, which is one of the reasons Norway maples were chosen after the tornado. “These are really tough conditions,” he said.

The beetles attack maples as well as birch, poplar and horse chestnut trees, but Ms. Orth said studies so far show they prefer maples of all kinds, except Japanese maples.

The main reason for the seminar on the beetles was to impress on representatives of land trusts and conservation organizations that they need to take the infestation seriously, even if it is now centered far from any of their properties. Mr. Lautzenheiser said the infestation has not been detected in the New England forest area to the north, but, if it is, it could cause serious damage to the logging, maple sugar and tourism industries.

“We really need to confront it and we need to contain it,” he said, adding that based on studies of forest types around the state, 1.7 million acres of trees could be affected by the Asian longhorned beetle.

“Every county except Dukes County has some vulnerability.”

Mr. Novick said it is extremely likely that at some point someone took beetle infested wood out of the area, possibly for camping, and the wood could have infested a state park or other forest. He said the beetles normally don’t travel far on their own.

At Bovenzi Park, which is not far from ground zero for the infestation, Mr. Novick said what made the problem significantly worse was the Dec. 11-12 ice storm. In the 120 acres of the conservation area, 40 infested trees already had been found. Then the ice storm hit and tops of trees infested with beetles broke and fell to the ground, possibly spreading the insects.

The park now looks as if the property were thinned by selective cutting. It no longer offers much of a barrier from Interstate 190. Invasive plant species already are moving into the logged area, and Mr. Novick said more work is needed. But those in the park with him discovered some signs of hope. Vernal pools on the property were teeming with wood frogs calling out with their unusual clucking sound.

“It’s still a forest. There are still trees. There are wood frogs in the pools,” Mr. Novick said, pointing to one pool that seemed to be bubbling with frogs.

Contact George Barnes by e-mail at gbarnes@telegram.com.

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